My 5 year old daughter has done superb at school. I do things a little different in my house. I dont just dish out presents for nothing. I illustrate 3 options. One small present for poor effort, then one for medium effort and a top prize for best effort. With the glowing 98% mark she got in the effort coloum of here teachers report im blow away and so proud of her. I simply must reward this as promised and then some!

(Note effort not grades. Not everyone can be a straight A's student. My only concern is she has an incentive to try her hardest and realizes early on that things don't grow on trees for many of us.)

So, time for skint daddy to stump up for an iPad Im not wealthy by any stretch of the mile. But will gladly sell the shirt of my back to reward her.

So, im not that good at this technology stuff but know enough to get by.

Options seem to be iPad 2 vs iPad mini as they cost a similar amount. My daughter is 5, shes gonna be watching stuff like Kung fu panda and other DVDs she already has and playing app store games mostly. She wont have Email but facetime is essential. The iPad will never leave our house.
Can anyone advise me between the two?

I have a load of xvid backups of my DVD collection and my daughters children DVDs too on my PC. Will I be able to stream them across to here iPad? I understand the iPads dont use Xvid and you have to do a conversion. But then with that comes the space to house all of this and the price between a 16 gig and a 64 gig is double. Id much rather get the 16 gig and stream over from my PCs hard drive.

A 5 year old girl? I'm not a big proponent of the iPad Mini but it sounds like the perfection situation to get one of those. It will do everything you want it to, and she wont miss the retina screen and won't be playing graphics intensive FPS games. I also think the Mini would be easier for a 5 year old to wield. Thats my vote

I think a 32gb iPad mini would be a good reward, as long a you use a good case. Remember a child's hands are small, and a mini is a better fit. Plus, with all the children's application that are available IOS is a good choice. You don't need 64 GB, 32 GB is enough for what you want to use it for. My daughter loves her mini. We have an iPad 3, but my daughter prefers the mini,easier to handle. She is 12 and paid for the mini out of money she saved from past birthdays and holidays. Good luck.

I switch on TV and watch spoilts 16 year olds getting given Ferrari's because there spoilt rotten. How could they be anything other?

I dont run things liken that. If my daughter had got 15% for effort (the only column of the report im interested in) then she'd have got a doll and nothing more. I would deliberately be harsh so she can see she has to stick in at school. Luckily Ive avoided this.

But 98%??? Im amazed and very proud and this HAS to be rewarded on the scale it deserves.

Im not very wealthy at all. Infact thanks to the recession and loosing my job ive never been more skint. But it is my duty to reward this.

If I have to pull out like this every year and then one day when shes 21 she gets a first on her honors degree then I honestly don't care.

Mental. If I did anything good when I was younger I would get a Pokemon sticker, not an iPod, and that was only a few years ago! What is she going to expect the time she does well in high school

As it is said too much on this forum, but ^^^^ THIS.

My wife and I have a 6, 3, and a year old. Our oldest daughter gets rewarded time in my iPad or time on my wife's iPad or time on the family desktop. The last thing that I want to do is start promoting in my daughter the attitude of entitlement and trying to one up ourselves year over year if she is top dog.

I believe in rewarding and encouraging good and awesome effort, but where that line is of giving too much is beyond me. This is becoming or has become and ethics post on my part. I apologize for going off topic, but I guess I would love to understand the thinking of why an iPad now?

If you absolutely have to go that route, I would look on craigslist for an iPad 1 or 2 that is fairly cheap and inexpensive. That's just me. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

And second hand ipad 2 here in UK is £260 ish. Same price as iPad Mini

Yeah I see that. I was writing my original reply before your response to the other guy came in. Good job for your daughter, but again not everything should be rewarded something that costs $4-500! I think it promotes entitlement. I really do. I've seen it in my oldest. I've seen it in the youth advocacy program that I work for.

Again, your values and situations are different than mine. I get that. I just don't understand the fact that you're saying your not wealthy and basically have been impacted by the recession and are still feeling it... Well, if you are still feeling it then why put yourself in a more difficult financial place?

I'll shut up after this post. I'm even regretting putting this up there, but perhaps the big topic at hand is where is ethically that line of kids "owning" their own iPads or iDevices? Are there other good ways to reward good behavior like going out to do something special as a family or taking her to an amusement park or doing something unique and fun together that is bonding?

Ie stick in and work hard and get qualified. I know with no good parenting behind me and no one giving a damn at all I had to do all of this later on in life and it was tough.

Im not trying to make her make up for my mistakes. More give her an environment that will equip her for the journey ahead.

Hey, if she decides to become a buddest monk and forego possessions totally ill still be proud of her. But I figure she can do that when she's responsible for her own actions IE over 18.

As we used to say in the Army, train hard fight easy. So by this if she sticks in now she has trained hard. Then instead of working 50 hours a week in Mcdonnals and earning £12000 a year she can work 35 hours a qualified professional but earn £35000 a year.

Unfortunately our lives on western earth evolve around money. Anyone who thinks they dont, get all you have and burn it, then in a month report back to me on how things are going for you.

Definitely a Mini. The form factor will be much better for a child, and it's honestly a superior device vs. an iPad2 (better cameras, better Wifi, higher PPI).

As mentioned above, drop your videos into iTunes, turn on Home Sharing, and you can consume any media on any device on your home network (iPad, Apple TV, other iTune instances).

The media will need to be in a compatible format - I personally like using the built-in video services vs. a 3rd party product, so I mux/encode/etc., our video so it's in a native iTunes/iOS format, but I could see if you have an existing library of content you'd rather not have to reprocess.

As the father of a stunningly bright, beautiful daughter, I can tell you an iPad (with of course, proper lock-down and content control) can be outstanding for entertainment, education and communication. While the initial entry price is higher than say a Nintendo handheld, the content/app costs are so low, you make it up quickly. So many outstanding apps from free to <$3